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Soul Eater Chapter 89: You put your right hand in, you put your right hand out.
You put your left hand in
But don't shake it all about!
You didn't do that with your right hand
And symmetry is really key
That's what it's all about!
So, anyway. We open with the Spartoi kids all sitting around and making Grimdark Serious faces, except for Harvar who is just wearing his normal facial expression.
"So they want us to be the ones to execute Crona..." Soul says.
Maka orally molests some ellipses.
"That's completely heartless, even by Shinigami-sama's standards," Kim objects. "No matter what Crona may have done, to give the execution order specifically to Maka's team is..."
"But I wouldn't want Crona to be dealt with in some other way without us ever knowing about it," Maka answers. "We might still be able to..."
She grits her teeth. "I don't know what to do... But I don't think it's too late..."
And then the Troika finally show up. "Sorry... We just got back."
"We heard the news," Liz says.
Kim immediately confronts Kid. "Kid! You're a shinigami, aren't you?! So you can go and tell Shinigami-sama that he's out of his freakin' mind! Ordering Maka's team to execute Crona is too cruel! And Crona might still be being manipulated by Medusa, so ordering an execution is... Anyway, we don't have enough information to justify an execution!"
Kid hesitates for a moment, then answers, "What Crona has done is unforgivable."
Maka finally lets slip her sad face.
"The death scythe Tsar and his partner Fyodor were, for all intents and purposes, murdered by Crona," Kid goes on. Well, uh, thank you for clearing that up, Ohkubo! Although I think what happened to Fyodor and Tsar technically counts as a Fate Worse Than Death rather than a simple murder, but who's nitpicking here? "And then Crona swallowed up an entire city's population in a black sphere of madness," Kid continues. "Crona's death sentence is inevitable."
Black Star suddenly grabs Kid by the collar. "Did you come all the way over here just to spout that boring shit?!" Black Star shouts.
Kid responds to this affront of his personal space bubble by punching Black Star in the chin. "Learn to listen all the way until the other person is finished talking," Kid says. "Anyway. I was also going to say that there is no such thing as an absolute, unbendable law." That was the right thing to say. Wasn't it, Eibon...?
"But..." Harvar interjects. "Even within the same nation you'll find different races of people holding different values. Just looks at us, just the Spartoi members in this room. The only thing binding all of these different people together are the laws that they must follow, right? Even a rational person like me can lose his head sometimes. That is a universal human weakness." Aaaaaand we have a flashback panel of Harvar stabbing Kim in the chest. "We have order not because of human rationality, but because we have rules and laws. Shinigami are the symbol of the law. If you start obscuring the law and acting mealy-mouthed about its enforcement, human civilization will descend into chaos."
Ah, the good ol' slippery slope fallacy. Harvar, were you just born with thatstick lightning rod up your ass?
Come on, Kid. Answer that one. Answer that one good. The former debate coach within me wants you to point out that Big Daddy bends rules all the freakin' time (i.e. taking in Crona, taking in Angela, making deals with Medusa, etc.) and that so far this has not caused human civilization to descend into anarchy and madness.That's Asura's fault, not Big Daddy's fault. But let's see what Kid can come up with to respond to Harvar.
"But there are those who have not yet agreed with the order to execute Crona," Kid responds. "Father may have given an order of execution on paper, but what I think he really wants us to do is to make our own decision about how we should deal with somebody who's unbound by rules like Crona. That was why he gave the execution order special to our Spartoi team. We're never going to advance in any meaningful way if all we do is keep our heads down and follow orders blindly."
"Now he's finally starting to sound like a good man," Liz says, making mooney eyes at Kid.
"So that's why we have to search for Crona right away," Kid goes on.
Meanwhile, Maka is making fists on her legs and staring off grimly into space. I have to be the first one of us to talk to Crona. I have to find Crona before anybody else does! She turns to Soul. "Soul, will you help me?"
Later! It's night, apparently, and Soul and Maka are standing on a high balcony somewhere on the Shibusen building. "Maka," Soul says, because I guess he needs to have at least one word bubble in this chapter.
"I'm going to use the full extent of my soul perception to search for Crona..."
And then, OTP SPARKLE POWER. I can feel my awareness covering the entire Earth. Soul's piano connects me to the entire world...
And he's playing the piano on her shoulders, apparently. Maka Albarn: Human Instrumentality.
And, pop!
Soul's soul---... And my soul---...
Now everybody's souls---...
Crona...
I'll just follow the insanity and...
I can see the whole world, and I WILL find you!
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Boy I hope y'all following along at home can see that an image of Excalibur is repeated three times (oddly sans any thought-bubble narration from Maka) during this search sequence. Three being a deeply symbolic number in this manga and all.
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
And, whoops. Following the trail of insanity didn't lead Maka to Crona at all. Instead she seems to have found a much, much bigger fish to fry.
THE MOON?!
Maka stares up at the moon as it drools blood on her face. I love you, Ohkubo.
"What's wrong, Maka?" Soul asks. "Did you find Crona?"
"No... I found the kishin..."
Meanwhile, JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST IT'S HORRORCORE TEZCA! Who is floating in Big Daddy's mirror. "The kishin is most likely hiding on the moon," Tezca reports.
The adults and Kid are "!!" upon hearing this news. Even though the rest of us in the fandom figured it out last month.
"Is that true?" Big Daddy asks. Which is probably the wrong question to be asking when one of your top agents whom you thought had turned traitor and dissappeared without a trace suddenly shows up dead and gory in your mirror. But Big Daddy has always kind of spectacularly failed at these basic social interactions (remember "HEY KIDS THERE'S A KISHIN SEALED IN THE BASEMENT! Okay carry on with your party now"?), so I guess this isn't surprising.
"When I was pursuin' Justin's soul, at one point I did feel a faint wavelength comin' from the moon... By the way, Justin kinda murdered my physical body. But I can still reflect my soul in a mirror. So I came here to tell ya about the moon thing."
Goddamn Tezca that is one buttfuckingugly soul you've got there.
Suddenly, Maka! "SHINIGAMI-SAMA!! I know where the kishin Asura is!!"
Hey, I bet that makes Tezca feel real swell. Now that he's died for no reason and all.
But hey, it's not like Ohkubo is going to show anybody caring - or even reacting whatsoever - to the news that Tezca is dead. Nope. Instead we're going to get a brief time skip indicated by a blank panel, and then Shinigami-sama saying, "So Maka-chan felt the kishin's presence on the moon with her soul perception too, huh..."
"Very impressive, Maka-chan!" Marie says with a smile.
"Not really... I was actually searching for Crona, and I just sort of accidentally found the kishin... And I only thought to look up there because I felt a high concentration of insanity in the upper atmosphere during our whale hunt..."
"The possibility that the kishin is hiding himself on the moon has just become a high likelihood," Sid declares. So I guess Stein was the one who sewed back on his arm, judging from the stitches.
"What should we do?" Nygus asks. Has she worn that black dress before? It looks pretty great on her.
"Well, it was my daughter Maka who found the kishin for us," Spirit says, "And it's thanks to my daughter that we know where the kishin is." Thank you, Captain Redundant! "Since it was my daughter who did all of the work, Papa just can't be left behind on this mission, right? I mean, for my daughter's sake and all."
Oh god Maka's face. Spirit totally deserves that reaction, though. Not only is his entire speech bubble both nonsensical and somehow completely gross at the same time, but TEZCA ALSO FOUND THE KISHIN AND PAID FOR IT WITH HIS LIFE. And isn't Tezca's soul like still right there next to Spirit? Jesus!
"Let's prepare for a final battle against the kishin," Stein says. "First, we need to call together all of the Death Scythes."
"I should..." Kid begins.
"Kid should be taken off the Spartoi's current mission and join the battle against the kishin," Stein says. "What do you think, Shinigami-sama?"
"That's right," Shinigami-sama says. "If there ends up being a battle on the moon, it will inevitably turn into an aerial battle---... So we're gonna need Kid's skateboard-fu."
Yes, he really said that. That's the closest English equivalent I can give you of Kid no skateboard-teku. Maybe "skateboard-no-jutsu" if you want to get really silly with the translation.
"But more importantly..." Shinigami-sama says. "This is a fight to re-establish 'order' in the world."
Kid looks grimserious, then he turns to Maka and Soul. "Maka. Soul. I agree with this decision... I'm sorry." He goes on, apparently needing to justify himself for four more word bubbles. "Father cannot go to the moon. As a shinigami, this is a battle that I must fight. This may be irresponsible of me, but Maka... You have to be the one who stops Crona... So I leave Crona up to you."
"I know. I understand..." Maka says."I didn't want you on my mission anyway. All you do is get yourself kidnapped and make Black Star act all weird and homoerotic around you. And you'd probably shoot Crona first and ask questions later anyway, because your character development is shallow and artificial and also because you're still a giant dick."
"Your mission is definitely the more dangerous one," Soul says to Kid. "So, you know, don't die or anything."
Kid laughs. "If I die, then Black Star is going to be pretty pissed off at me." Then, more seriously (and recycling artwork from a previous panel to indicate this serious GODDAMN OHKUBO THAT IS SOME ECONOMICAL ARTISTRY YOU'VE GOT GOING ON HERE): "There is no question that he is absolutely the strongest at Shibusen right now. Which I find oddly vexing... I suppose that this must have been the emotion that was driving Black Star before now." Kid makes a resolute fist. "But I can still become much stronger than I am now! I'll definitely surpass him again!"
Soul rolls his eyes. "Kid..."
"Do NOT repeat a word of that to Black Star," Kid says, threatening Soul with a raised finger. "It will make him insufferably cocky."
"Okay," Soul says, fist-bumping Kid. "I gotcha."
Kid stares at the fist that Soul bumped and chews on some ellipses.
Finally he holds out his other fist. "Do my left hand too," he demands.
"Geez..." Soul says as he obligingly bumps Kid's other fist. "Guess you haven't changed that much after all."
Later, when the kids and the other adults are gone, Spirit and Big Daddy are alone in front of Big Daddy's mirror.
Big Daddy sighs. Which is really impressive, because he has no mouth.
"You're impatient, aren't you," Spirit says.
"Uh-hu~~h. A widdle."
Oh man I can totally imagine Shinigami-sama somehow managing to sound like a sad little puppy when he says those lines.
Then he changes his tune. "Na~~h. It's not like that. Kid is already such a splendid shinigami. And when Kid becomes a complete shinigami, it won't matter whether I can move anymore or not, right?" Shinigami-sama cries a single, beautiful emo tear. "But lately Kid's eyes haven't been as cold as they used to be. That makes me impatient."
Oh Shinigami-sama, I love you. (*hugs*)
"When Kid became a real shinigami, he understood," Spirit says.
"Either way, I might not ever see his smiling face again..."
MEANWHILE!
Oh fuck, it's these assholes again.
And apparently Nu!Noah has ROCKET HANDS or some shit I dunno.
Anywhoo, Index is having some sort of breakdown and word-vomiting all over the page. "I WANT TO TEACH. I want to instruct. I want to profess. I WANT TO MAKE THEM KNOW. I want to coach. I want to educate. I WANT TO SHOW THEM. I want to guide them. I want them to learn. I want to edify. I WANT TO EXPLAIN. I want to inform. I want to enlighten. I want to guide them. In other words," Index says, "I WANT TO TEACH."
Geez, Ohkubo, did you give your thesaurus enough of a workout this month, or what?
"The BREW is mine," Index goes on. Hey, something else that everybody else in this manga seems to not care about anymore! "If I can utilize the kishin's insanity, I can force Eibon's great knowledge to spread..."
Sure. Okay. That plan makes perfect sense and isn't illogical (not to mention fairly boring and anti-climatic sounding) AT ALL.
Meanwhile! "HEY, YOU LITTLE SHIT!!" Noah shouts. "ARE YOU FUCKING KEEPIN' UP WITH ME OR WHAT?!"
"Yes! I'm only three wing-flaps behind you, Noah-sama!"
"I CAN'T HEAAAAAAAAAAR YOU!!"
"Yes! I'm only three wing-flaps behind you, Noah-sama!"
Well, that was certainly not a completely pointless and unfunny interlude. Darnit, Waffles, usually we can COUNT on you to provide epic hilarity! I guess this must have been your off-chapter, though. But that's okay. Brush it off, kid, brush it off. But we're definitely counting on you to be actually funny the next time that you appear, so don't let us down, okay?
Meanwhile, Maka is tired and sweaty!
"Are you okay?" Soul asks her. "Maka..."
"I'm okay," Maka says. "It was just kind of a shock to suddenly feel the wavelength of the kishin's insanity like that. And in the end, we still didn't find Crona..."
"We should stop searching for Crona today," Soul says.
Maka glares up at the moon.
And Justin leers right down back at her. I guess his face is always going to be like that now. "They found us..."
NEXT MONTH: COLOR ILLUSTRATION!
Also, that is the end of this month's chapter.
So, you know. PACING, MOTHERFUCKERS. It's the one thing that Ohkubo is fairly terrible with, and this chapter was a pretty perfect example of that. Last month I was scratching my head and wondering where the hell any sort of resolution to the Fyodor and Tsar business - which would only have taken a single line of dialogue, as it did in this chapter - was, as well as where the hell any sort of believable emotional reaction from Maka re: the news about Crona was. And then we got it in this chapter. But it was jarring, discordant, and weird to have that whaling business stuck in there (as awesome as the whaling business was) without first seeing and hearing the stuff that we finally got to see and hear in this chapter.
Which is really the pattern with Ohkubo. Kid gets kidnapped by a terrifying villain? Nobody has any sort of emotional reaction until several months after the fact. Justin goes insane? The only person who seems to even care is Tezca, and we don't see his reaction until half a year after the fact. Black Star finds out that Crona is crazypants and has grown a third arm? Maka doesn't react until three chapters after the fact. Maka finds out that Crona murdered an entire city full of people? Emotional reaction four months after the fact. Tezca murdered? I'm sure that somebody will express an emotional reaction to this in either November or December.
Of course Ohkubo doesn't do this all the time. But the times that he actually shows timely fallout from major Oh Shit moments - i.e. Asura's resurrection, BJ's murder, Kim's defection, Crona's first disappearance, etc. etc. - it only serves to highlight how weird it is for readers to NOT see those believable emotional reactions immediately in reaction to the event, rather than after two or three months of lighthearted side missions and practice flying or whatnot.
In short: PACING, IT MATTERS.
Which is my only real complaint about this chapter - that a few things that we saw this month we should have seen or heard last month - and no matter which plot thread next month's chapter picks up on, it's definitely going to be a good one.
Unless we re-visit Noah and Waffles and they turn out to be boring and unfunny again.
Siiiiiiigh.
ETA: Hey anonymice! Remember that this is a public post and that linking to scans (or scanslations) is against livejournal's TOS. If your comment contains a link to a scanslation, it will NOT be unscreened. Right now there are actually three of you (!!) who have submitted comments with links to scanslations in them, so that's why your comments haven't been unscreened. You're welcome to comment again without the links, though.
Also, yes, we know that in chapter 79 Justin was praying to God and looking up at the moon at the same time. This was pointed out repeatedly in the comments last month. ^^;;
But don't shake it all about!
You didn't do that with your right hand
And symmetry is really key
That's what it's all about!
So, anyway. We open with the Spartoi kids all sitting around and making Grimdark Serious faces, except for Harvar who is just wearing his normal facial expression.
"So they want us to be the ones to execute Crona..." Soul says.
Maka orally molests some ellipses.
"That's completely heartless, even by Shinigami-sama's standards," Kim objects. "No matter what Crona may have done, to give the execution order specifically to Maka's team is..."
"But I wouldn't want Crona to be dealt with in some other way without us ever knowing about it," Maka answers. "We might still be able to..."
She grits her teeth. "I don't know what to do... But I don't think it's too late..."
And then the Troika finally show up. "Sorry... We just got back."
"We heard the news," Liz says.
Kim immediately confronts Kid. "Kid! You're a shinigami, aren't you?! So you can go and tell Shinigami-sama that he's out of his freakin' mind! Ordering Maka's team to execute Crona is too cruel! And Crona might still be being manipulated by Medusa, so ordering an execution is... Anyway, we don't have enough information to justify an execution!"
Kid hesitates for a moment, then answers, "What Crona has done is unforgivable."
Maka finally lets slip her sad face.
"The death scythe Tsar and his partner Fyodor were, for all intents and purposes, murdered by Crona," Kid goes on. Well, uh, thank you for clearing that up, Ohkubo! Although I think what happened to Fyodor and Tsar technically counts as a Fate Worse Than Death rather than a simple murder, but who's nitpicking here? "And then Crona swallowed up an entire city's population in a black sphere of madness," Kid continues. "Crona's death sentence is inevitable."
Black Star suddenly grabs Kid by the collar. "Did you come all the way over here just to spout that boring shit?!" Black Star shouts.
Kid responds to this affront of his personal space bubble by punching Black Star in the chin. "Learn to listen all the way until the other person is finished talking," Kid says. "Anyway. I was also going to say that there is no such thing as an absolute, unbendable law." That was the right thing to say. Wasn't it, Eibon...?
"But..." Harvar interjects. "Even within the same nation you'll find different races of people holding different values. Just looks at us, just the Spartoi members in this room. The only thing binding all of these different people together are the laws that they must follow, right? Even a rational person like me can lose his head sometimes. That is a universal human weakness." Aaaaaand we have a flashback panel of Harvar stabbing Kim in the chest. "We have order not because of human rationality, but because we have rules and laws. Shinigami are the symbol of the law. If you start obscuring the law and acting mealy-mouthed about its enforcement, human civilization will descend into chaos."
Ah, the good ol' slippery slope fallacy. Harvar, were you just born with that
Come on, Kid. Answer that one. Answer that one good. The former debate coach within me wants you to point out that Big Daddy bends rules all the freakin' time (i.e. taking in Crona, taking in Angela, making deals with Medusa, etc.) and that so far this has not caused human civilization to descend into anarchy and madness.
"But there are those who have not yet agreed with the order to execute Crona," Kid responds. "Father may have given an order of execution on paper, but what I think he really wants us to do is to make our own decision about how we should deal with somebody who's unbound by rules like Crona. That was why he gave the execution order special to our Spartoi team. We're never going to advance in any meaningful way if all we do is keep our heads down and follow orders blindly."
"Now he's finally starting to sound like a good man," Liz says, making mooney eyes at Kid.
"So that's why we have to search for Crona right away," Kid goes on.
Meanwhile, Maka is making fists on her legs and staring off grimly into space. I have to be the first one of us to talk to Crona. I have to find Crona before anybody else does! She turns to Soul. "Soul, will you help me?"
Later! It's night, apparently, and Soul and Maka are standing on a high balcony somewhere on the Shibusen building. "Maka," Soul says, because I guess he needs to have at least one word bubble in this chapter.
"I'm going to use the full extent of my soul perception to search for Crona..."
And then, OTP SPARKLE POWER. I can feel my awareness covering the entire Earth. Soul's piano connects me to the entire world...
And he's playing the piano on her shoulders, apparently. Maka Albarn: Human Instrumentality.
And, pop!
Soul's soul---... And my soul---...
Now everybody's souls---...
Crona...
I'll just follow the insanity and...
I can see the whole world, and I WILL find you!
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Boy I hope y'all following along at home can see that an image of Excalibur is repeated three times (oddly sans any thought-bubble narration from Maka) during this search sequence. Three being a deeply symbolic number in this manga and all.
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
Are you here?
And, whoops. Following the trail of insanity didn't lead Maka to Crona at all. Instead she seems to have found a much, much bigger fish to fry.
THE MOON?!
Maka stares up at the moon as it drools blood on her face. I love you, Ohkubo.
"What's wrong, Maka?" Soul asks. "Did you find Crona?"
"No... I found the kishin..."
Meanwhile, JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST IT'S HORRORCORE TEZCA! Who is floating in Big Daddy's mirror. "The kishin is most likely hiding on the moon," Tezca reports.
The adults and Kid are "!!" upon hearing this news. Even though the rest of us in the fandom figured it out last month.
"Is that true?" Big Daddy asks. Which is probably the wrong question to be asking when one of your top agents whom you thought had turned traitor and dissappeared without a trace suddenly shows up dead and gory in your mirror. But Big Daddy has always kind of spectacularly failed at these basic social interactions (remember "HEY KIDS THERE'S A KISHIN SEALED IN THE BASEMENT! Okay carry on with your party now"?), so I guess this isn't surprising.
"When I was pursuin' Justin's soul, at one point I did feel a faint wavelength comin' from the moon... By the way, Justin kinda murdered my physical body. But I can still reflect my soul in a mirror. So I came here to tell ya about the moon thing."
Goddamn Tezca that is one buttfuckingugly soul you've got there.
Suddenly, Maka! "SHINIGAMI-SAMA!! I know where the kishin Asura is!!"
Hey, I bet that makes Tezca feel real swell. Now that he's died for no reason and all.
But hey, it's not like Ohkubo is going to show anybody caring - or even reacting whatsoever - to the news that Tezca is dead. Nope. Instead we're going to get a brief time skip indicated by a blank panel, and then Shinigami-sama saying, "So Maka-chan felt the kishin's presence on the moon with her soul perception too, huh..."
"Very impressive, Maka-chan!" Marie says with a smile.
"Not really... I was actually searching for Crona, and I just sort of accidentally found the kishin... And I only thought to look up there because I felt a high concentration of insanity in the upper atmosphere during our whale hunt..."
"The possibility that the kishin is hiding himself on the moon has just become a high likelihood," Sid declares. So I guess Stein was the one who sewed back on his arm, judging from the stitches.
"What should we do?" Nygus asks. Has she worn that black dress before? It looks pretty great on her.
"Well, it was my daughter Maka who found the kishin for us," Spirit says, "And it's thanks to my daughter that we know where the kishin is." Thank you, Captain Redundant! "Since it was my daughter who did all of the work, Papa just can't be left behind on this mission, right? I mean, for my daughter's sake and all."
Oh god Maka's face. Spirit totally deserves that reaction, though. Not only is his entire speech bubble both nonsensical and somehow completely gross at the same time, but TEZCA ALSO FOUND THE KISHIN AND PAID FOR IT WITH HIS LIFE. And isn't Tezca's soul like still right there next to Spirit? Jesus!
"Let's prepare for a final battle against the kishin," Stein says. "First, we need to call together all of the Death Scythes."
"I should..." Kid begins.
"Kid should be taken off the Spartoi's current mission and join the battle against the kishin," Stein says. "What do you think, Shinigami-sama?"
"That's right," Shinigami-sama says. "If there ends up being a battle on the moon, it will inevitably turn into an aerial battle---... So we're gonna need Kid's skateboard-fu."
Yes, he really said that. That's the closest English equivalent I can give you of Kid no skateboard-teku. Maybe "skateboard-no-jutsu" if you want to get really silly with the translation.
"But more importantly..." Shinigami-sama says. "This is a fight to re-establish 'order' in the world."
Kid looks grimserious, then he turns to Maka and Soul. "Maka. Soul. I agree with this decision... I'm sorry." He goes on, apparently needing to justify himself for four more word bubbles. "Father cannot go to the moon. As a shinigami, this is a battle that I must fight. This may be irresponsible of me, but Maka... You have to be the one who stops Crona... So I leave Crona up to you."
"I know. I understand..." Maka says.
"Your mission is definitely the more dangerous one," Soul says to Kid. "So, you know, don't die or anything."
Kid laughs. "If I die, then Black Star is going to be pretty pissed off at me." Then, more seriously (and recycling artwork from a previous panel to indicate this serious GODDAMN OHKUBO THAT IS SOME ECONOMICAL ARTISTRY YOU'VE GOT GOING ON HERE): "There is no question that he is absolutely the strongest at Shibusen right now. Which I find oddly vexing... I suppose that this must have been the emotion that was driving Black Star before now." Kid makes a resolute fist. "But I can still become much stronger than I am now! I'll definitely surpass him again!"
Soul rolls his eyes. "Kid..."
"Do NOT repeat a word of that to Black Star," Kid says, threatening Soul with a raised finger. "It will make him insufferably cocky."
"Okay," Soul says, fist-bumping Kid. "I gotcha."
Kid stares at the fist that Soul bumped and chews on some ellipses.
Finally he holds out his other fist. "Do my left hand too," he demands.
"Geez..." Soul says as he obligingly bumps Kid's other fist. "Guess you haven't changed that much after all."
Later, when the kids and the other adults are gone, Spirit and Big Daddy are alone in front of Big Daddy's mirror.
Big Daddy sighs. Which is really impressive, because he has no mouth.
"You're impatient, aren't you," Spirit says.
"Uh-hu~~h. A widdle."
Oh man I can totally imagine Shinigami-sama somehow managing to sound like a sad little puppy when he says those lines.
Then he changes his tune. "Na~~h. It's not like that. Kid is already such a splendid shinigami. And when Kid becomes a complete shinigami, it won't matter whether I can move anymore or not, right?" Shinigami-sama cries a single, beautiful emo tear. "But lately Kid's eyes haven't been as cold as they used to be. That makes me impatient."
Oh Shinigami-sama, I love you. (*hugs*)
"When Kid became a real shinigami, he understood," Spirit says.
"Either way, I might not ever see his smiling face again..."
MEANWHILE!
Oh fuck, it's these assholes again.
And apparently Nu!Noah has ROCKET HANDS or some shit I dunno.
Anywhoo, Index is having some sort of breakdown and word-vomiting all over the page. "I WANT TO TEACH. I want to instruct. I want to profess. I WANT TO MAKE THEM KNOW. I want to coach. I want to educate. I WANT TO SHOW THEM. I want to guide them. I want them to learn. I want to edify. I WANT TO EXPLAIN. I want to inform. I want to enlighten. I want to guide them. In other words," Index says, "I WANT TO TEACH."
Geez, Ohkubo, did you give your thesaurus enough of a workout this month, or what?
"The BREW is mine," Index goes on. Hey, something else that everybody else in this manga seems to not care about anymore! "If I can utilize the kishin's insanity, I can force Eibon's great knowledge to spread..."
Sure. Okay. That plan makes perfect sense and isn't illogical (not to mention fairly boring and anti-climatic sounding) AT ALL.
Meanwhile! "HEY, YOU LITTLE SHIT!!" Noah shouts. "ARE YOU FUCKING KEEPIN' UP WITH ME OR WHAT?!"
"Yes! I'm only three wing-flaps behind you, Noah-sama!"
"I CAN'T HEAAAAAAAAAAR YOU!!"
"Yes! I'm only three wing-flaps behind you, Noah-sama!"
Well, that was certainly not a completely pointless and unfunny interlude. Darnit, Waffles, usually we can COUNT on you to provide epic hilarity! I guess this must have been your off-chapter, though. But that's okay. Brush it off, kid, brush it off. But we're definitely counting on you to be actually funny the next time that you appear, so don't let us down, okay?
Meanwhile, Maka is tired and sweaty!
"Are you okay?" Soul asks her. "Maka..."
"I'm okay," Maka says. "It was just kind of a shock to suddenly feel the wavelength of the kishin's insanity like that. And in the end, we still didn't find Crona..."
"We should stop searching for Crona today," Soul says.
Maka glares up at the moon.
And Justin leers right down back at her. I guess his face is always going to be like that now. "They found us..."
NEXT MONTH: COLOR ILLUSTRATION!
Also, that is the end of this month's chapter.
So, you know. PACING, MOTHERFUCKERS. It's the one thing that Ohkubo is fairly terrible with, and this chapter was a pretty perfect example of that. Last month I was scratching my head and wondering where the hell any sort of resolution to the Fyodor and Tsar business - which would only have taken a single line of dialogue, as it did in this chapter - was, as well as where the hell any sort of believable emotional reaction from Maka re: the news about Crona was. And then we got it in this chapter. But it was jarring, discordant, and weird to have that whaling business stuck in there (as awesome as the whaling business was) without first seeing and hearing the stuff that we finally got to see and hear in this chapter.
Which is really the pattern with Ohkubo. Kid gets kidnapped by a terrifying villain? Nobody has any sort of emotional reaction until several months after the fact. Justin goes insane? The only person who seems to even care is Tezca, and we don't see his reaction until half a year after the fact. Black Star finds out that Crona is crazypants and has grown a third arm? Maka doesn't react until three chapters after the fact. Maka finds out that Crona murdered an entire city full of people? Emotional reaction four months after the fact. Tezca murdered? I'm sure that somebody will express an emotional reaction to this in either November or December.
Of course Ohkubo doesn't do this all the time. But the times that he actually shows timely fallout from major Oh Shit moments - i.e. Asura's resurrection, BJ's murder, Kim's defection, Crona's first disappearance, etc. etc. - it only serves to highlight how weird it is for readers to NOT see those believable emotional reactions immediately in reaction to the event, rather than after two or three months of lighthearted side missions and practice flying or whatnot.
In short: PACING, IT MATTERS.
Which is my only real complaint about this chapter - that a few things that we saw this month we should have seen or heard last month - and no matter which plot thread next month's chapter picks up on, it's definitely going to be a good one.
Unless we re-visit Noah and Waffles and they turn out to be boring and unfunny again.
Siiiiiiigh.
ETA: Hey anonymice! Remember that this is a public post and that linking to scans (or scanslations) is against livejournal's TOS. If your comment contains a link to a scanslation, it will NOT be unscreened. Right now there are actually three of you (!!) who have submitted comments with links to scanslations in them, so that's why your comments haven't been unscreened. You're welcome to comment again without the links, though.
Also, yes, we know that in chapter 79 Justin was praying to God and looking up at the moon at the same time. This was pointed out repeatedly in the comments last month. ^^;;
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